ABSTRACT
In the conclusion to his memoirs on the apartheid-era destruction of Sophiatown and the brutal removal of its black inhabitants, Don Mattera (2009, p, 152) paints a picture of a township that was left "buried deep under the weight and power of the tin gods whose bulldozers” decimated hopes and dreams, leaving in their wake the “dust of defeat”. But that is not the last picture with which he leaves his readers: in a sudden change of mood, Mattera switches to defiance, saying there is “nothing that memory cannot reach or touch or call back", for “memory is a weapon" that can grasp “that place where laws and guns cannot reach" so he believed "it was only a matter of time and Sophiatown would be reborn" (Mattera, 2009, p. 152).
